After two decades online, I am perplexed. It is not that I have not had a good time on the Internet. But today, I am uneasy about this trendy and oversold community. Visionaries see a future of telecommuting workers, interactive libraries, and multimedia classrooms. Commerce and business will shift from offices and malls to networks and modems. Baloney. Consider today's online world. The Usenet allows anyone to post messages across the nation. Your word gets out; every voice can be heard cheaply and instantly. The result? Every voice is heard. The cacophany more closely resembles CB radio, complete with handles, harrasment, and anonymous threats. When most everyone shouts, few listen. How about electronic publishing? Try reading a book on disc. At best, it is an unpleasant chore: the glow of a clunky computer replaces the friendly pages of a book. And you cannot tote that laptop to the beach. Yet Nicholas Negroponte, director of the MIT Media Lab, predicts that we will soon buy books and newspapers straight over the Intenet. Uh, sure.
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